Tuesday, September 18, 2007

India, the person

Glancing idly at a world map and marveling at the variety of shapes of different countries, I find myself swelling with justifiable pride.

China may be an economic giant, but its map, alas, resembles a hen in the process of hatching its eggs.

The map of Italy looks like a weak-kneed footballer about to strike the Sicilian ball , rather tamely.

Great Britain, for all its greatness, reminds me of a cartoon character called Baby Huey.

And the map of USA, no offense meant, has the appearance of the posterior of an oversized Uncle Sam.

And India? Ha, she is different and stands tall in all her glory..

No country’s map lends itself so readily to anthropomorphist delight as does India’s. The north-south length and the east-west spread, with Jammu and Kashmir as the head, Punjab and HP the slender neck and peninsular India as the legs, manage to imbue it with such symmetry and grace, as to give it a perfect human-like shape.

Aren’t you proud?

By the way, back in the pre-Internet era, hard copies of Time, Newsweek and Economist used to carry the map of India to reflect the status quo, that is along the LOC,. They had to carry a correction (defacing the map with a rubber stamp) that the map was neither authentic nor correct, or they would be accused of serious cartographical conspiracy. It is still illegal, but the Internet cuts across such geographical boundaries and such instances are far too many, for authorities to track.

But, the point that is of relevance to this post is that without the areas that are called PoK or the Chinese-controlled area, the map of India loses its sense of proportion and resembles a human body with a distorted and vacuumed-out head. At least for this reason, we should not cede this territory.

In fact, carving out Pakistan did us lot of good. We now have perfectly drooping shoulders and outstretched arms, which would have been seriously distorted had we carried the baggage of Pakistan on our back.

Charming concept.Maybe the large posterior is asking for a well deserved kick!No wonder we have our beautiful Bharat Mata of the elegantly drooping shoulders.Presumably the chi(n)cken came before the egg.